Today is your, (Couples’ Names) wedding anniversary and your celebration. On the (date) you took upon yourselves the responsibility of married life. This afternoon we gather here to renew your marriage vows and to re-affirm with happiness a new era in your life. It will be a time when you can concentrate on developing your continued love for each other, freer than you have been from the tensions and hassles which characterize the struggle to become established in life and in nurturing a growing relationship.

This anniversary is a time when you can reassure each other. As you express to each other deep loyalty and loving trust as the continued basis of your marriage relationship.

The anniversary is, as it were a plateau from which you can look together with gratitude and humility in your hearts on the years that have passed, conscious of the sharing, the caring, the joys and sorrows, of family life and of wonderful friends made; and you can look forward to the future with strength and assurance of even wider joys and experiences.

Both of you believe in marriage and in the fullness of the husband and wife relationship and you know that a deep bond unites you both together. All the stresses and tensions of the past have not weakened your love but have only made you more determined to stand by each other. This relationship is and must be very deep - as the poet says, “Deep calls to deep in the roar of the cataracts”

Your relationship, I know, is as important to you as life itself. Today’s re-commitment should encourage you both to continue that dedication to each other so that you can look forward to a settled and contented future.

READING 1 Corinthians 13

Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited, it is never rude or selfish, it does not take offense and it is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s faults, but delights in the truth.
It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope. It is always ready to endure whatever comes. True love does not come to an end. Two lives, two people, so very different, yet so similar. Together we stand as one, sharing our future as it comes. The past is that - past.
Buds are yet to blossom, with care and trust, the best to be revealed.
Honesty and kindness, are the fruits of love. Lord bless this day and always, to enrich us so our love will never end.

Before you are re-joined together in marriage in my presence and in the presence of these your family, friends and witnesses, I am to remind you once more of the serious and binding nature of the relationship you are now about to re-enter.

Marriage as most of us understand it, is a voluntary and full commitment of a man to a woman and a woman to a man. It is made in the deepest sense to the exclusion of all others and is entered into with the desire, hope and the firm intention that it will last for life.

Minister: I shall now ask you to take your vows.

I (Groom’s Name) re-affirm my love to you (Bride’s Name) as I invite you to share my life. I promise always to respect your needs. I will endeavor through kindness, unselfishness and trust to achieve the warm rich life we now look forward to. To this end, I call upon all present to witness that I continue to take you to be my lawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health while we both shall live.

I (Bride’s Name) re-affirm my love to you (Groom’s Name) as I invite you to share my life. I promise always to respect your needs. I will endeavor through kindness, unselfishness and trust to achieve the warm rich life we now look forward to. To this end, I call upon all present to witness that I continue to take you to be my lawful husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health while we both shall live.

VOWS

Groom: (Bride’s Name), with this ring I thee again wed. Take it and wear it as a pledge of my love, and as a symbol of all we shall share.

Bride: (Groom’s Name), with this ring I thee again wed. Take it and wear it as a pledge of my love, and as a symbol of all we shall share.

Minister: (Bride’s and Groom’s Names), you have declared before all of us that you will continue to live together in marriage. You have made special promises to each other which have been symbolized by the joining of hands, taking of vows and the giving and receiving of two rings.

I declare that the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you and also the blessing of all of us will remain with you as husband and wife.

Now that the ceremony is over and the experience of living day by day is about to re-commence, go and meet life gladly.